This article provides a high-level overview of managing updates for the Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365. It is important to stay informed about the latest updates and understanding the different types of updates that are deployed to ensure platform stability and minimize disruptions.
New features, optimisations, bug fixes, deprecations, and security patches are constantly being deployed, making this guide essential for anyone whose role involves managing Power Platform environments. It covers both new and existing information that is crucial for effective management.
In this article I will be focusing on four core concepts:
- Release Wave Updates – Major updates to the Power Platform service that are generally available twice per year in April and October. These updates are deployed automatically.
- Early Access Updates – Updates designed for testing functionality in test environments, available ahead of the automatic wave updates. These updates are deployed manually.
- Refresh Cadence (Incremental Updates) – Updates that occur between Wave Release cycles and can be deployed weekly or monthly. These updates occur automatically.
- Release Channels (for Model Driven Apps) – Semi Annual (twice yearly) or Monthly updates to the Unified Interface that drives Model Driven Power Apps.
Release Wave Updates
Release Waves are major updates to the Power Platform and Dynamics 365, including product enhancements, bug fixes, deprecations, and optimisations. Release Plans are available in January for Wave 1 and July for Wave 2.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/release-plan/2025wave1/
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/release-plan/2024wave2/
These updates automatically deploy in April and October. Unlike in the past, updates cannot be delayed and will be rolled out automatically to ensure platform stability. Therefore, it’s important to test features early through Early Access Updates.
Early Access Updates
There is potential for Release Waves to contain deprecations and breaking changes that could affect administrative functions, end user experiences or the maker-authoring experience and therefore should be tested within a non-production environment prior to the Automatic Wave Update of your production environments.
It is for these reasons outlined above that Early Access Updates are made available. Microsoft will release early access to Release Waves for testing in pre-production environments according to the following schedule:
Release Wave 1
- Early Access – First Monday of February
- Sovereign Cloud Early Access – Second Monday of February
Release Wave 2
- Early Access – Second Monday of August
- Sovereign Cloud Early Access – Second Monday of August
You will see the update available within the Power Platform Administration Console, and depicted below.
Figure 1 – Available Updates are Shown within PPAC
Once deployed, this will enable early testing of new features – it is important to report any critical issues via Microsoft Support to ensure that defects can be detected early and remediated prior to GA.
Refresh Cadence
Additional to Release Waves, Microsoft will often deploy minor enhancements to the Power Platform. They include optimisations and bug fixes through to access to new features (both experimental and generally available).
Power Platform administrators have the ability to control the frequency of these updates through an environment setting known as Release Cadence.
Figure 2 – Refresh Cadence Setting in PPAC
The following options are available:
- Frequent – Access the latest updates and newest features multiple times once per month. Usually once per week over weekends.
- Moderate – Access to updates and features once per month.
Release notes are available through the following website:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/released-versions/powerapps
Microsoft practices safe deployment practices, new versions are rolled out to specific clusters and regions in a staggered manner in order to detect problems early and pause rollout if necessary.
The following is an example of the current versions for the Unified Interface (Model-Driven), Power Apps Studio/Mobile (Canvas) and Maker experience.
Figure 3 – Example of Current Versions of Power Platform
In order to verify your currently deployed version within your environment, this information is typically available within the Support menu under settings.
Figure 3 – Current Version (Authoring)
Staying Informed of Updates
The Microsoft 365 Message Center is a crucial tool for administrators to stay informed of upcoming changes, features and any planned maintenance for the Microsoft Power Platform.
Figure 4 – Example of Message Center Screen
Of particular importance on the Message Center screen are the following:
- Service – Which service this will be impacted (e.g. Power Automate, Dataverse, etc)
- Tags – Showing the impact or change type (e.g. New Feature, Admin Impact, User Impact, Major Update etc)
- Status for your Org – Showing the status as it relates to our organisation instance (e.g. Scheduled, Rolling Out, Launched)
- Relevance – High denotes immediate action is required to avoid disruption, Medium indicates new features or an early announcement of a breaking change, and Low refers a change likely requiring monitoring but likely not to impact your organisation.
Detailed information of the change is available when you click on the selected item. The information window will show information such as:
- Maintenance windows
- How the change affects you
- What additional actions need to be taken prior or post change
Figure 5 – Change Information
Release Channels (for Model Driven Apps)
If you are using Model Driven Power Apps (Unified Interface), you will have further control over the updates that affect these apps. The Release Channel setting allows you to control the frequency of updates at an Environment, Solution or App level.
Microsoft releases new versions of Unified Interface on a regular basis in the following regions and in the following order:
- First release environment (FRE) – this option is only available in certain regions
- Canada, South America, India, France, South Africa, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Korea, Singapore
- United Arab Emirates, Japan, Asia Pacific, Great Britain, Australia
- Europe
- United States
For more information on the release schedule go to:
The settings that are available for Release Schedule are:
- Auto – for environments with 2024 Release Wave 2 or newer this is defaulted to Monthly. For previous versions this is semi-annual. At time of writing everyone should be on Auto – Monthly.
- Monthly – Explicitly set to monthly releases.
- Semi-Annual – Explicitly set to Semi-Annual (the twice-yearly release wave).
On order to set the release channel within an App, you can navigate to the Power App editor experience (Maker Portal), under Settings > General, set the App Release Channel. This is depicted below:
Figure 6 – Release Channel Setting (App Level)
You may also set the Release Channel at a Solution level by navigating to your Solution > Add Existing > Setting > and Searching for AppChannel setting. It requires you to set a value of 0 (Auto), 1 (Monthly) or 3 (Semi-Annual). This is also depicted below:
Figure 7 – Release Channel Setting (Solution Level)
Now that you have the Release Channel set, you can test upcoming releases directly from your browser when you run the Power App.
In order to test an upcoming release, you can add &channelrelease=next to the app URL.
Other URL parameters / options can be found here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/power-apps/maker/model-driven-apps/channel-change
To verify which version of Unified Interface your app is running within your browser, you can check via Settings > About and look for the Channel value (e.g. Monthly – April 2025).
Figure 8 – Release Channel (Version Checking)
Summary
Ensuring that you stay informed about changes to the Power Platform is crucial for the smooth operation and continuity of services. By understanding the impact, relevance, and necessary actions associated with these updates, you can proactively manage them and avoid any potential disruptions to your operations. It is important to regularly check Message Centre updates, understand how they affect your organisation, and take the required steps in a timely manner.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to me.